AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER

This year's Vanity Fair Oscar party, celebrating the 81st annual Academy Awards, was an intimate and glamorous evening. The party was held at the Sunset Tower Hotel, overlooking the twinkling lights of Los Angeles. Dinner guests, who included movie stars, moguls, politicians, newsmakers, and one very famous airline pilot, gathered for cocktails at the Tower Bar and then dined on chicken pot pie, steak frites, and bananas Foster. The soiree was in full swing by nine P.M., when the luminaries streamed out onto the terrace for dancing, mingling, and In-n-Out burgers. Then the most coveted little gold men in Hollywood began pouring in on the arms of their new owners—Kate Winslet, Penelope Cruz, Sean Penn—and by the time Danny Boyle arrived with the cast and crew of Slumdog Millionaire, there were simply too many to count. The celebration continued into the early hours of Monday morning. Photographs by Jonathan Becker, Larry Fink, Dafydd Jones, Jean Pigozzi, and Hannah Thomson.